Sublimation of
Mental
States

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The
Need for Clear
Terminology

The realm
of emotions has always been a confused one within traditional views of
morality. The importance of emotions to moral debate is that some
attitudes to morality and virtue arise from the sublimations of
particular emotions. The confusion about emotions has led to confusion
about morality. Hence some traditional moral views are inherently
confused. [¹]

To
penetrate and attempt to clear the confusion I need to make some
distinctions in terminology. I give specific meanings to the terms
‘morality’,
‘virtue’,
and
‘ethics’.

Over the
past few centuries the progress of science and technology has been
quite spectacular. However, the moral development of mankind has not
kept pace with it.

In
general,
the moral standards of most Western
peoples are patchy and poor, and only kept in place by social
pressures rather than by individual integrity. In fact, social
pressures are both the usual source of moral standards and the
force that maintains them.

Social pressures produce social
conditioning and social learning. Conditioning always produces
mental conflict. However, when the conditioning has been absorbed
into the subconscious
level of the person's mind, and no longer
generates friction, then it can be called learning.

For
most people, moral
standards are derived
from social conditioning.

The rules of social behaviour
that a person
adheres to represent the level of goodness that he can practice
and the level of truth about ideas of right and wrong that he can
accept.

When a person advances beyond
the social
consensus and becomes an idealist (who has ideals that are
non-materialistic, such as ethical, spiritual, or political fairness
ones), the contemporary state of
social conditioning becomes restrictive to his further evolution.
He needs to examine, and possibly discard, contemporary moral
standards until he can formulate a higher set of rules for
himself. Social conditioning is always a challenge to overcome in
order to progress to higher standards.

Terminology
Standards reflect character traits.
I need to make a distinction in the origin of these traits. I
need to make this distinction because character traits have two
different roots. Each person has two aspects to his character, a social
aspect and an individual aspect. Each aspect gives rise to
its own standards and traits. So in order to label the roots
of character traits I use the
terms ‘morality’
and ‘virtue’.

(
I
am therefore changing traditional terminology, which treats these
two terms as being more or less identical ).

There are two roots
because some traits of
responsible
behaviour are social ones, and others are purely aspects
of
individuality.

I
use the term ‘morality’
when social traits are produced by
social learning.

I
use the term ‘virtues’
when individual traits arise as a reaction to social
conditioning.

The problem with
any morality that is
derived from social learning or any virtue that is generated as a
reaction to it is that they are unstable and likely to change (in
the direction of becoming more right-wing)
during
times of social
abreaction. [2a].
When,
however, some deliberate choice is involved in determining one's
standards then I use the term ‘ethics’.
I prefer to cultivate ethics rather than either morality or
virtue. Conditioning and
learning just affect behaviour.
Deliberation brings
in motives. [2b]

I
consider ethics to be the critical and
clear-minded analysis of the
problems of right and wrong, good and evil.

To ensure that ethical debate
is meaningful,
an
understanding of the processes of sublimation and internalisation
is needed. Both use emotions and desires, but emotion is more
prominent in sublimation whereas internalisation focuses
primarily on desire.

To begin with, I need to repeat
a couple of
ideas from previous articles.

First,
the two psychological
mechanisms of projection
and introjection link together
in a loop to create the
dialogue between what I call the
‘desire for power ’ and the ‘will to
power ’. These
are two paths to power.
In
the
desire for power, the person
aims
at power over his situations and environment (this
is the use
of the will ) ; the desire for
power is centred on jealousy.
In the
will to power, he aims at
power over himself (this
is
the control of the will ) ; the
will to power is centred on
narcissism. (see article Power).

Secondly,
the determinism that acts on a person has two major factors: the
need for social approval and the inferiority complex. [³]

Any state of mind is always
underpinned by
emotional factors. I use the term ‘emotional
dynamics’ to mean the
principal emotions that drive any particular
state of mind.

Sublimation is the process of
making
emotional
dynamics that are (usually) considered to be unpleasant into
socially-acceptable attitudes and states of mind. It is the
process whereby the emotions (and their associated beliefs and
attitudes) that are considered to be ‘bad’ are
transformed into qualities of character that are considered to be
‘good’. In past times negative emotions were
repressed.
Now they need to be sublimated. Repression denies wholeness to a
person. Sublimation enables one to fulfil oneself. The rationale
of sublimation is that all emotions have a place in human
development.

Freud, in his early writings,
considered
that
the primary drive
in man is the sexual instinct, libido ; the
process of sublimation becomes the various ways of re-directing
libido. I reject this assumption. I reject the idea that any
physiological drive or instinct can produce ethical, even
spiritual, states of mind. Existential
choice can never arise
from any instinct.

Nietzsche proposed that the
will to power
is the person's primary
drive (Hollingdale,
1973). I accept this as a partial explanation of the evolutionary
process, but with a qualification. For Nietzsche the will to
power was more of a physiological drive rather than
‘will’
in the conventional sense. I translate the will to power back
into an existential drive, without any connotations of instinct.

For me, the will to power is
the conscious
and
/or subconscious means of directing personal evolution. The will
to power acts as an existential drive, focusing on the use of
free will. The
dynamic
of this process is the person's intensity of idealism.
The
psychological content of this drive arises from ways of
satisfying the need for social approval and ways of compensating
the inferiority complex.

The binary (or complementary) process
to the will to power is the
desire for power. The desire
for
power always arises first in the person's evolutionary journey,
and only when it is frustrated and then (sometimes) repudiated
does the will to power arise – frustration begins the
process of self-questioning, which is the origin of idealism. [4]

Freud had little understanding
of power. The
desire for power can explain everything that Freud explained
using the concept of libido, and more besides. The re-direction
of the desire for power into sexuality gives rise to the sexual
politics of the family. But I cannot see how re-direction of
libido can give rise to the politics of power ; it may generate
the idea that might is right (a rationalisation of physical
strength, which can pass as a product of an instinct), but
nothing else. Certainly not socialism or anarchism or
existentialism.

After reading Nietzsche's
concept of
sublimation, I set myself the task of identifying attitudes that
have their base in my repertoire of regular emotions. The
difficulty with establishing the sublimation of an emotion is
that it cannot be deduced by either wishful or logical thinking.
The only way to do it is to take any major attitude that is
currently dominant in your mind, or any major ideal that is
currently motivating you, and then try to identify through
awareness what emotion it springs from, that is, what
subconscious emotion is associated with it. Identifying emotions
is an empirical task and not a rational one. Conversely, any
rational conjecture on sublimation has to be verified by
empiricism.

Emotions form into pairs or binaries.
Therefore the sublimation of one emotion needs to be compatible
with the sublimation
of its binary. [5]
In addition,
some emotions have an
additional complexity : they are compound and consist of two
simpler emotions (these two emotions are factors of the compound
emotion). The factors do not exert their influence simultaneously
; only one is dominant at any particular time. I use the term
‘mode’
to indicate which factor is
being dominant at that time, that is, to indicate the manner in
which the compound emotion is being experienced.

For
example,
guilt comprises the two simpler emotions of self-pity and self-hate. I
denote this in the following way. Guilt = self-pity +
self-hate.
So when the
self-pity factor is being dominant, I describe this
as experiencing guilt (in the mode of self-pity). Similarly, when
the self-hate factor is being dominant, this is guilt (in the
mode of self-hate).

Some moral practitioners want
to better the
condition of the world rather than to concentrate on personal
salvation ; such moral idealists usually focus on the practice of
duty and social obligation. Social concerns have a base in
jealousy. The sublimation of jealousy leads to morality.

The narcissistic person prefers
to be free,
free from social obligations and morality, since these carry the
blemish of coercion. The sublimation of narcissism produces
individualism. Individualism has various levels to it: for
example, at the bottom is the amoral person ; somewhere in the
middle we have the individualism of nineteenth century
Liberalism, defined in political and economic terms ; at the top
is the subjective existentialist, trying to break all the chains
of coercion that restrict him.

To be more specific about the
sublimations
of
these two emotions I turn to the end states of each emotion.

Jealousy
= love + self-pity

The love mode generates
sociability and a
focus
on community, which is needed when individualism is no longer the
best response to changing times. The self-pity mode generates
social dependency. Through sublimation, social dependency
transforms into a positive asset. Obligation and duty, and
morality in general, are social traits of good character that
make social dependency respectable.

Narcissism
= love + vanity

The sublimation of the love
mode gives a
positive feature to egoism. Individualism is the love of a
completely free life, without any chains. Without individualism,
there would be nothing to challenge a community (based on jealousy)
that had deteriorated and become unable to meet the needs of
changing times. The vanity mode fosters my own abilities and
strengths. Virtues are the individual's traits of good character
that are independent of society, such as dignity, tolerance,
courage, integrity. Some of these traits (such as integrity) do
not arise from narcissism, but nevertheless require an
affirmation of narcissism before they
can be developed.

In times of social change,
people tend to
centre on either jealousy or narcissism. Change is a dialogue
between people who need to affirm their sense of individuality
and other people who need to base themselves on a sense of
community.

The roots
of some sublimations are not always
as obvious as they might
appear.
For example, the ideals of
brotherhood
and camaraderie
are quite different. The ideal of
brotherhood is a social one, and reflects the love mode of
jealousy. Here each person is assumed to be one's equal, even
though this assumption is generally false ; the group is a
collection of socially-centred people. Whereas camaraderie within
a group reflects the love mode of narcissism, because each person
is definitely one's equal, in tried and tested ways ; the group
is a collection of individuals. In peculiar circumstances, such
as the trench warfare of World War I, ideals of brotherhood and
camaraderie intermingle.

The connection
between jealousy, desire for power (focused
on jealousy),
and morality (sublimation of jealousy) ‘stabilises’
or
solidifies a person's character and makes him dislike social
change. As a deep psycho-analysis abreacts the intensity of
jealousy so this type of power is lost and the person becomes
de-stabilised.
He then becomes vulnerable to swings of mania and depression. The
depressive stage of manic depression arises from jealousy in self-pity
mode. Hence any loss of moral codes (the failure of sublimation)
can lead to depression ; depression can become the response to
jealousy (self-pity mode) instead of morality. [6]

A deep psycho-analysis also
abreacts the
intensity of narcissism, thereby enabling the person to feel more
at home in a community.

I look at the binary comprising
love and
hate.
It is not just negative emotions that cause problems and so need
to be sublimated. Even pure love needs to be sublimated, just
like other emotions ; love can cause difficulties for the
idealist, just as any other emotion can. Love can take away the
need to learn about oneself and other people.

Equality
is the only attitude that is derivable from
a
motivation of pure love. Equality dissolves the passion from
love, thereby enabling love to be applied to everyone in the same
way. The unconscious
idea that creates pure love is
‘I am
the same as everyone else’. [7].
The practice of equality enables a person to
treat
everybody in the same way.

All ability in concentration
and meditation
requires an emotional dynamic of hate. Hate clears the mind of
trivialities and produces a mood that can be mistaken for a mild sense
of calmness, but
also clears the person from society and into solitude. The
unconscious idea that maintains hate is ‘I am
different from
everyone else’. It is more common for original thinkers of
any depth to be anti-social, for example Newton ; it is unusual
for such a thinker to be social, for example Leibniz. The
Buddhist way of offsetting the necessity of hate in the meditator
is the advocacy of a compassionate attitude to all others.
Compassion dissolves the passion from
hate.

The
sublimation
of love is equality.
The
sublimation of hate is compassion.

At one stage of my
psycho-analysis I was
plunged into a state of catatonia for a few minutes. This
experience haunted me for a year and generated a great amount of
hopelessness and self-pity. I scrambled out of it by affirming
faith in myself.

The sublimation of self-pity is
faith.
There are three forms of self-pity, so
there are also
three forms of faith. Jealousy is a social emotion, and its mode
of self-pity generates blind faith in a teacher or in any person
acting as a role model. Guilt in self-pity mode is the ultimate
disaster, so faith needs the highest helping hand, that of god.

Vanity is a most interesting
paradox. Vanity
is
usually conflated with egoism and then almost universally
denounced in traditional religious ethics, both Eastern and
Western. This view indicates confusion and self-deception. If a
person examines the emotional dynamics of any of his noble ideals
he will find that they are based on vanity. Vanity is the carrier
wave for all ideals.

The
sublimation
of vanity is idealism.

For example: if a person sets
justice as his
noblest ideal, then the emotional dynamics of this ideal are
vanity plus envy (the pursuit of justice is the sublimation of
envy). If a person prefers duty (as an aspect of morality) to be
his best ideal, then the emotional dynamics of this ideal are
vanity plus jealousy (mode of self-pity).

It is a common criticism of
idealists that
they
are vain – this only means that their idealism is intense,
and so their vanity is correspondingly intense. For normal man,
his vanity within his ideals may not be noticeable simply because
his ideals are not set very high. However, for the high-flying
idealist who considers himself to be following a spiritual
practice, his intense vanity does cause serious problems, such as
a sensitivity both to criticism and to failures in relationships.

This
is the paradox of spirituality : vanity causes problems, but you cannot
do without it if you want to achieve your spiritual ideals.

The self-hate mode produces a
very
unpleasant
state of mind and can cause intense levels of distress. The usual
way to survive this kind of self-hate is to aim for a state of
purity where criticism no longer harms oneself.

The self-pity mode is
debilitating and makes
one languid and tired ; no matter how long one rests, one never
gets refreshed. To overcome it one needs to generate an attitude
of perfectionism. Becoming a perfectionist in one’s work
creates a resolute mental routine that offsets the
meaninglessness that the self-pity mode produces. Set routines
maintain set lines of thinking, and so banish any questions. Set
routines are a way of handling a lack of meaning.

The factors of pride are:

Pride
= vanity + hatred of other people

Pride can be inflexible ; in
some ways this
attitude is valuable. The bedrock of my character is my integrity:
I can sacrifice everything except that. If I lose my integrity in
any social situation then I switch to guilt and start to feel
intense self-hatred, and even the desire for suicide. The vanity
mode generates integrity and cannot be devalued without intense
trauma.

I hate other people when they
impose
themselves
on me. Only my world is important. What is important about my
world is the freedom to do things my way, irrespective of the
demands of other people. I only begin to consider that other
people’s views are just as good as mine when I learn to
respect people.

A person may be deeply upset by
some form of
immorality that he has done earlier in his life, or he may
believe that he is the victim of some form of injustice. Such
beliefs generate intense resentment and bitterness.

Forgiveness dissolves
resentment. And the
fading of bitterness leads to the acceptance of the
previously-disturbing
belief. Since resentment and bitterness are regular states of
mind produced by regular sequences of abreaction, so forgiveness
and acceptance need to become regular states of mind too.

The
sublimation
of resentment is forgiveness.
The
sublimation of bitterness is acceptance.

These two emotions are very
important, since
they can shape the course of a nation's history.

Greed
A person seeks a moral teacher
because he has no sense of being a moral authority himself. By
doing the will of a teacher the person acquires a surrogate moral
authority. The drama of being devoted to an outstanding person
revolves around the greed for moral authority, and the person
gets this authority in the measure that he is devoted to the
teacher. Greed is consecrated into devotion.

Therefore, the more that a
person is centred
on
a materialist life, which means that greed is focused on
materialist desires, then correspondingly the less capable of
spiritual effort such a person will be.

Envy
When envy stirs in me I deny
attachment to any people who I feel have shown a lack of fairness
to me. Envy is stimulated by being on the receiving end of
injustice. I direct my envy internally
to destroy social conditioning ;
this
destructiveness
is my revenge for the trauma of my infancy. I can give up my
envy, my revenge, when justice has been done to me.

Politicians direct envy
externally
to destroy political systems and social
groups: for
example, Hitler (with his anti-Semitism)
and Stalin (the 1930s
communist show trials). Envy is the motive when barbarian tribes
destroy more cultured societies : for example, the fall of the
Minoan and the Roman civilisations.

Envy is the most
destructive of all
emotions and it is the basis of Freud’s ‘death
instinct ’
[8].
Correspondingly, the only basis for an enduring and non-destructive
society is justice. Justice precedes in importance all other
attitudes and ideals, even those of freedom and equality. If a
society lacks justice it will not survive for very long: it will
eventually become destructive, since envy
will sooner or later
eclipse all ‘good’ emotions, including love.

The
sublimation
of greed
is devotion.
The
sublimation of envy is justice.

Often my
response to dominant fear is to access
anger and then keep it controlled by my idealism so that I can
face the unpleasant situation. Anger sustains the attitudes
needed to give leadership when a person is under great stress in
difficult situations.

What is the sublimation of fear
? It is the
consciousness of freedom. Fear of something always prevents a
person from being what he wants to be. Freedom is the only state
of mind that enables a person to face fear without denying it,
without repressing it, or without switching
to anger as an
antidote.

The
sublimation of
anger is leadership.
The
sublimation of fear is freedom.

There
are three other ways of handling fear

1). When fear is absent, then
equanimity can
arise. Equanimity means the cessation of making value judgements,
and this is the basis on which any situation can be faced
directly and harmoniously. However, this state of mind is the
most difficult of all to achieve.

2). A common desire for
religious persons
and
meditators is to yearn for peace, the ‘peace that passes
understanding’. How does peace compare with equanimity ?
The
difference between them is the difference between repression (absence
from the conscious mind, but present in the subconscious mind)
and the absence from both conscious and subconscious minds. Peace
is the repression
of fear.

3). Another common desire of
meditators is
to
still the mind of all activity in order to generate a state of
internal silence. This desire arises from bitterness. It
represents neither equanimity nor peace.

End
Note

It is always possible that the
sublimation
of
an emotion may have more than one corresponding attitude and
belief ; there may be perhaps two or three, in a hierarchy of
importance. The particular one espoused will then reflect the
need of the age. In a low-stress society, an attitude at the
bottom of the hierarchy may be what is needed. In a high-stress
society the attitude at the top is the one to achieve.

In general, sublimation is the
process
whereby
a person re-directs his emotional drives from lower goals to
higher ones ; his unrefined emotional motivations are transformed
into attitudes and qualities of character that are either
socially-acceptable or less egoistic.

Each person has many goals,
many ideals,
which
he wishes to achieve. These can be graded according to the
intensity of the underlying emotional motivations. This means
that whatever is a person's highest ideal will indicate which is
the most powerful emotional drive in him.

Different
ideals sublimate
different
emotions.

References

The
number in brackets
at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that
featured it. For the addresses
of my websites, see the Links
page.

[¹].
My definitions, descriptions, and analysis
of emotions
are given in the three articles on Emotion.
See home
page. [1]

[2a].
My analysis of the process of abreaction
is given in
the five articles on Abreaction.
See home
page.
In particular, ideas on social abreaction are given in the fourth
article : Resentment
and Bitterness. [2a]

[2b].
There are more notes on the
terms morality, virtue,
and ethics
in the
article Morality.
[2b]

[3].
The need for social approval and the
inferiority complex are described in the article Aspects
of Personal Identity.
A more general account of determinism is given in the article
Determinism,
on my website Discover
Your Mind. [3]

[4].
The terms "will to power" and
"desire for power" are explained in more detail in the
article Power.
There is an article on Personal
Evolution. [4]

[5].
The binary nature of emotions is explained
in the first article on Emotion.
[5]

[6].
Mania and
depression are the subject of articles on my website Patterns
of Confusion. [6]

[7].
I introduce the
use of the term "unconscious idea" in the first article
on Emotion.
[7]

[8].
Envy is
described in two articles on my website Patterns
of Confusion. The two
articles are Depression and
Autism and other States of
Despair, and Envy
and the Death Desire.[8]

For more ideas on sublimation,
the
sublimation of sexuality is analysed in the article Sexuality
and Ethics.